3 Mormon Officials Tried To Obtain `Lost` Documents

October 24, 1985|By James Coates, Chicago Tribune

SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon church`s hierarchy disclosed Wednesday that three of its highest- ranking officers had discussed buying rare historical documents from the shadowy central figure in a series of bombings that erupted here last week.

The disclosures, which came in the form of a press conference and the release of prepared statements, amounted to the first official admission that the church itself had been keenly interested in the controversial documents that apparently motivated the bizarre bomb attacks.

Church President Gordon Hinckley, the executive in charge of the day-to- day affairs of the $2 billion Mormon business and real-estate empire, admitted buying 40 documents from the man in question, Mark Hofmann, 31.

Police here said Hofmann planted nail-filled pipe bombs that killed two people last week: Mormon Bishop Steven Christensen and Kathy Sheets, wife of Christensen`s business partner, Gary Sheets. All three were deeply involved in negotiations over the documents.

Hofmann was injured the next day when a third bomb accidentally detonated as he was placing it on the seat of his sports car across the street from the high-rise headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in downtown Salt Lake City, police said.

Since then there has been rampant speculation about why the bombings occurred, but there is general agreement among law officials that the common links among the victims are documents casting doubt on Mormon teachings, including one called the ``White Salamander Letter.``

Since 1980, Hofmann, a dealer in autographs and antique papers, has obtained and sold a number of uncomplimentary documents purporting to deal with the early history of the church.

The release of these documents has caused intense controversy between church critics and the hierarchy by raising questions about key church tenets such as the teaching that the religion`s holy book, the Book of Mormon, was given to founder Joseph Smith by an angel.

Other documents that Hofmann obtained, and passed on to the church, indicate that the original New York publisher of the Book of Mormon had doubts about its veracity; that Smith did not want the church prophet Brigham Young to succeed him; and that Smith was a practitioner of early 19th Century folk magic.

At a press conference Wednesday at the headquarters building, Hinckley acknowledged that Hofmann had been trying to sell the church a new set of documents called the McLellin collection that reportedly cast the church`s founder in an even more unfavorable light than the others. Hinckley, however, said that while the church would have been willing to accept the McLellin documents as a gift, it would not have purchased them.

Elder Hugh Pinnock, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, another governing body, issued a statement acknowledging that he helped Hofmann obtain a $185,000 loan to buy the McLellin papers.

Dallin Oaks, like Hinckley a member of the church`s ruling Council of the Twelve Apostles, said at the press conference that the discussions of the McLellin papers were ``a normal, though confidential, proposed commercial transaction (that) has been made to appear sinister and underhanded.``